Colorado Democrats and their national allies are pressing the state's supreme court to speed up a ruling on two ballot measures that would allow mid-decade redistricting, and they are running out of time. Backers of the effort filed a court document last week urging the all-Democratic-appointed bench to act, warning that more than 50 days of silence from the justices threatens to sink the initiative before voters ever see it.
The two measures, which would green-light a partisan congressional remap ahead of the 2028 elections, need roughly 125,000 signatures apiece from registered Colorado voters. The final signature deadline is August 3. With the Colorado Supreme Court still sitting on a Republican lawsuit to block the measures, organizers say the clock is becoming their biggest obstacle.
That an entirely Democratic-appointed court might inadvertently, or deliberately, slow-walk a Democratic redistricting project is an irony worth savoring. But the broader context is what makes this fight matter: Colorado is one front in a nationwide redistricting arms race that has accelerated since the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling limiting the Voting Rights Act's Section 2, a decision that has emboldened Republican map-drawers across the South and put Democrats on defense heading into 2028.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that the first ballot measure would authorize mid-decade redistricting in Colorado, a break from the standard practice of redrawing maps only after each decennial census. The second measure would go further, allowing the state to adopt a temporary, partisan congressional map for the 2028 and 2030 elections, bypassing Colorado's independent redistricting commission until new census-based maps arrive.
Democrats hope the two measures together could yield up to three new Democratic-favoring congressional districts. The effort is backed by a group called Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, whose spokesman, Curtis Hubbard, has publicly accused the court of dragging its feet.
Hubbard told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the court's delay "casts a dark cloud over the entire process," adding that its "foot-dragging risks stripping voters of their chance to weigh in on the most important issues in this election."
Republicans, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit to block both measures, arguing they violate Colorado's single-subject requirement. Scott Gessler, the lawyer representing the Republican challenge, laid out the argument plainly:
"By tying the two initiatives together through use of the effective date clauses, the proponents are connecting two separate subjects, in violation of the single-subject requirement. This is effectively a way to avoid the single-subject requirement by forcing voters to accept or reject both initiatives as a package deal."
Gessler told the outlet he did not consider the court's timeline unusual, particularly if the justices intend to issue a written opinion. "I think the timeline clearly shows that the court will issue a written opinion," he said. "That takes much longer."
All seven sitting members of the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democratic governors. That fact makes the Democratic complaints about delay all the more striking. If the backers' theory is correct, that the court is effectively running out the clock, it means a bench built entirely by their own party's governors is the obstacle.
The redistricting backers said as much in their court filing, arguing that "the delay creates uncertainty amongst petition signers, volunteers and supporters about the viability of the measure, and further erodes the fundamental right to the initiative power."
The court has given no public indication of when it plans to rule. With the August 3 signature deadline looming and organizers still needing to collect roughly 125,000 valid signatures per measure, every week of silence narrows the window.
Democrats have already watched redistricting defeats pile up in other states, making the Colorado gambit feel increasingly urgent for the party's national map strategy.
Colorado's fight does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a broader, state-by-state redistricting scramble that has intensified since Texas moved to redraw its congressional maps mid-decade at President Trump's urging. As Newsmax reported, the Texas effort could flip five additional House seats from Democrat to Republican, shifting the state's already lopsided 25-12 GOP advantage even further. There is no federal law prohibiting mid-decade redistricting for political reasons, Texas used the same playbook successfully in 2004 under then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
That precedent set off alarm bells among Democrats. Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., now chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, issued a statement in February framing Colorado's ballot measures as a defensive response:
"Republicans have demonstrated that their mid-decade gerrymanders will not end after the 2026 midterms, and in the face of that continued threat, Colorado is taking a responsible step by asking the voters to weigh in on the state's temporary response. Let's be clear: Colorado did not choose this fight."
Holder's framing is revealing. He calls the Colorado push a "temporary response" and insists the state "did not choose this fight", language designed to make a partisan power grab sound like reluctant self-defense. But the second ballot measure would explicitly bypass the state's independent redistricting commission, the very body voters created to take partisanship out of map-drawing. That is not defense. That is offense dressed in defensive clothing.
The redistricting scramble has already produced concrete results, and casualties, elsewhere. In Tennessee, longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen announced he would not seek reelection after his Memphis district was redrawn in a way that made his seat far less favorable.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais further tilted the playing field. The ruling, as Fox News reported, struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and narrowed how race can be used in drawing maps. It now requires plaintiffs to prove racially discriminatory motive when challenging congressional maps, a significantly higher bar than before.
A report from Fair Fight Action and the Black Voters Matter Fund estimates the ruling could swing approximately 12 Democratic-held House districts to Republican candidates. RNC Chair Joe Gruters praised the decision, saying, "The American people don't want to see Americans segregated by race in their congressional maps." DNC Chair Ken Martin called it a step that "effectively killed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act."
Republican governors in Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have moved aggressively to capitalize. The Washington Examiner reported that GOP governors are calling special legislative sessions or advancing new maps that could collectively create over a dozen additional Republican-leaning congressional seats. In Florida alone, a DeSantis-backed map could carve up Democratic-leaning districts in Tampa, Orlando, and along the southeast coast to create up to four new Republican-friendly seats.
Democrats have not taken these moves quietly. In Florida, one Democratic lawmaker grabbed a bullhorn on the House floor in an attempt to disrupt a redistricting vote, the bill passed anyway.
Colorado Democrats might also take note of what happened in Virginia, where a Democrat-backed redistricting measure that voters had approved was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling. As Breitbart reported, the court found the measure was passed in an unconstitutional manner, nullifying what would have been four new heavily Democratic congressional districts. Republicans celebrated the decision as a victory for fair maps.
The Virginia outcome illustrates a risk Colorado Democrats face: even voter-approved measures can be overturned on procedural or constitutional grounds. Gessler's single-subject challenge in Colorado follows the same logic, attacking not the policy goal but the legal mechanism used to achieve it.
Nationally, the redistricting picture remains fluid. A social media post from the account Politics & Poll Tracker flagged Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York as blue states that have "hinted at redistricting in 2028." Meanwhile, recent shifts in House race ratings suggest the broader electoral environment remains competitive, giving both parties reason to fight over every district line.
The Colorado Supreme Court's silence raises legitimate questions, but not the ones Democrats are asking. The more important question is whether a state that created an independent redistricting commission specifically to prevent partisan gerrymandering should now let one party's ballot measures override that commission with a temporary partisan map.
Democrats built their argument on the premise that Republican mid-decade redistricting in Texas and elsewhere forced their hand. But the second Colorado measure does not restore fairness, it replaces one form of partisan map-drawing with another, just under a different party's control. Holder's language about a "temporary response" does not change the substance of what is being proposed: sidelining an independent commission in favor of maps drawn for partisan advantage.
If the Colorado Supreme Court ultimately blocks the measures on single-subject grounds, Democrats will blame the delay and the justices. If the court clears the measures, organizers still face the challenge of collecting a quarter-million combined signatures in a compressed window. Either way, the episode exposes a pattern: the party that most loudly denounces gerrymandering is often the first to reach for the same tools when the political math demands it.
Voters in Colorado and across the country can see the contradiction plainly enough. When one side calls redistricting a threat to democracy and then tries to bypass its own independent commission to draw favorable maps, the problem is not the court's timeline. The problem is the argument.